Midnight Kitty - I very much wanted to bluntly point out to my mother that her principles only mattered to her so long as they weren't interfering with what she wanted to do... but although we have a pretty good relationship, we don't have one where I can criticise her in any significant way. And yes, I totally agree with you! Planning and planting your garden with native plants and open water and so forth so it's an excellent environment for native birds and animals? Awesome. Feeding those native birds and animals empty calories that they will come to depend on? Noooooot so great.

Ooh! Ooh! I just now have a brand new one, courtesy of the Good Ethnic Boy!

Say you store your cans of Coke Zero in the garage, and as a result they're a bit warm when you bring them into the house (summer here). Say your usual method of dealing with this is putting them in the freezer for half an hour to speed-chill them. Say you usually also set a timer to go off when you plan to take them out, to make sure you don't forget. Say you usually remember even without the timer.

Don't decide that you don't need the timer. You will forget, and you will leave two cans in the freezer overnight, and they will explode. Spectacularly. Awesomely. Magnificently.

Your wife will be giggling the whole time she's helping you clean up.

If you want it to get cold faster, wet a piece of paper towel and wrap it around your Coke before you put it in there. They get colder in ten minutes than they do in half an hour when dry.

MythBusters has shown an even faster way to cool Coke or any other canned beverage. Burry it in ice with just enough water to fill the spaces between the ice cubes. I use a small pitcher, not much larger diameter than the can. The Coke goes from room temperature to drinking temperature in 5 minutes.

MythBusters has shown an even faster way to cool Coke or any other canned beverage. Burry it in ice with just enough water to fill the spaces between the ice cubes. I use a small pitcher, not much larger diameter than the can. The Coke goes from room temperature to drinking temperature in 5 minutes.

I think I probably posted this before in this thread but with the current freezing weather it bears repeating.....Don't leave a case of Coke in the car overnight in below freezing temperature. The cans WILL explode most spectacularly, resulting in a mess of frozen Coke all over the inside of your car. This will result in some epic swearing, followed by over an hour of cleaning involving a full roll of paper towels, trying to get the frozen Coke off the seats, roof, dashboard, windshield....You get the picture.

You have never gone into the garage to get something out of the shelves, only to find a hissing mass of teeth.

Very true! Cute from a safe distance.

As mentioned upthread, we had 'possums in our garbage can on the back porch. I discovered this by taking the lid off of the can and there are three little opossums, hissing up at me. My first though was "what the heck are these?!", followed about three seconds later by "d'aww....", then two seconds later "but seriously, what the hell?!"

The coke Zero reminded me of one. Lancer's bubbly is actually really good with steak if you pop it in the freezer when you put the steak on the grill. Assuming you don't like your meat more than rare.

Do not think about this loveliness while unloading groceries and put the Lancer's in the freezer. Bubbly things freezing in a ceramic bottle makes a big mess. Worse part is, you just wasted the Lancer's.